I think the reader will agree with me that it is very difficult to believe in the humanity of the royal child’s guardians. Moreover no one had been deluded as to the aim pursued by the persecutors of this unhappy martyr. When the news spread through Europe that he had been separated from his mother and placed in the care of Simon and his wife, the world was at once convinced that the object was, not only to ruin his physical health, but also to soil and pervert his mind. And it is unfortunately certain that this end was attained only too successfully. My eminent contemporary, Lenotre, has somewhere produced the evidence of men who heard the little prisoner insulting his mother, his sister, and his aunt in the most abominable words. Who taught them to him, if not Simon?

The echo of these thing was heard even in Vienna. When the Austrian Archduchess Marie-Anne, the sister of the Emperor Francis II, heard of Marie-Antoinette’s death, she wrote to La Farer, Bishop of Nancy, who was then in that capital:
“Monseigneur, I heard of the unfortunate Queen’s death in some black-sealed letter that I received from Dresden. It is a terrible event. One must submit to the decrees of Providence; but it must be admitted that they are sometimes very harsh. It is said that Madame Elisabeth is already in the Consiergeri, which means death. What of Madame Royale? Will she have the strength to bear all the tortures that are being prepared for her?
“But of all the individuals of that unhappy family the one I pity the most is the poor little King, who, unless God have the mercy to take him from this world, will become a little monster.”

This judgment was only too correct. It is truly fortunate that Louis XVI’s heir did not live, for his guardians’ evil teachings had corrupted him to such a degree that it would have been very difficult to make him forget them and to cure the injury that they had done him. His moral health was permanently ruined.

As for his physical health, we know from the Chevalier de Frotte what it had become. After vowing to secure the release of the unfortunate child Frotte gave up all idea of doing so. “He had fallen into such a state of physical and moral prostration,” he wrote, “that there is no object in concerning oneself with him.”